W Mr Oldman

Associated with Ethnology collections

Private collector and dealer based at 77 Brixton Hill, London, and Poynders Road, Clapham Park. A Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Polynesian Society, he is best known for his printed catalogues of ethnographic items. In 1947, his house in Clapham Park was issued with a compulsory purchase order for redevelopment and in 1948 his collection was purchased by the Government of New Zealand for £44,000.

Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand has documentation on their Oldman collection in the form of stockbooks and letterbooks but the artefacts are not described and other information is rarely included as Oldman was often a middleman between sellers and buyers. The collection there is mainly from his early years as a collector.